With Russia in Syria, a
geopolitical structure that lasted four decades is in shambles. The U.S.
needs a new strategy and priorities.

Wall Street Journal, Oct 16, 2015

The debate about whether the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with
Iran regarding its nuclear program stabilized the Middle East’s
strategic framework had barely begun when the region’s geopolitical
framework collapsed. Russia’s unilateral military action in Syria is the
latest symptom of the disintegration of the American role in
stabilizing the Middle East order that emerged from the Arab-Israeli war
of 1973.

In the aftermath of that conflict, Egypt abandoned its
military ties with the Soviet Union and joined an American-backed
negotiating process that produced peace treaties between Israel and
Egypt, and Israel and Jordan, a United Nations-supervised disengagement
agreement between Israel and Syria, which has been observed for over
four decades (even by the parties of the Syrian civil war), and
international support of Lebanon’s sovereign territorial integrity.
Later, Saddam Hussein’s war to incorporate Kuwait into Iraq was
defeated by an international coalition under U.S. leadership. American
forces led the war against terror in Iraq and Afghanistan. Egypt,
Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf States were our allies in all
these efforts. The Russian military presence disappeared from the
region.

That geopolitical pattern is now in shambles. Four states
in the region have ceased to function as sovereign. Libya, Yemen, Syria
and Iraq have become targets for nonstate movements seeking to impose
their rule. Over large swaths in Iraq and Syria, an ideologically
radical religious army has declared itself the Islamic State (also
called ISIS or ISIL) as an unrelenting foe of established world order.
It seeks to replace the international system’s multiplicity of states
with a caliphate, a single Islamic empire governed by Shariah law.

ISIS’
claim has given the millennium-old split between the Shiite and Sunni
sects of Islam an apocalyptic dimension. The remaining Sunni states feel
threatened by both the religious fervor of ISIS as well as by Shiite
Iran, potentially the most powerful state in the region. Iran compounds
its menace by presenting itself in a dual capacity. On one level, Iran
acts as a legitimate Westphalian state conducting traditional diplomacy,
even invoking the safeguards of the international system. At the same
time, it organizes and guides nonstate actors seeking regional hegemony
based on jihadist principles: Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria; Hamas in
Gaza; the Houthis in Yemen.

Thus the Sunni Middle East risks
engulfment by four concurrent sources: Shiite-governed Iran and its
legacy of Persian imperialism; ideologically and religiously radical
movements striving to overthrow prevalent political structures;
conflicts within each state between ethnic and religious groups
arbitrarily assembled after World War I into (now collapsing) states;
and domestic pressures stemming from detrimental political, social and
economic domestic policies.

The fate of Syria provides a vivid
illustration: What started as a Sunni revolt against the Alawite (a
Shiite offshoot) autocrat Bashar Assad fractured the state into its
component religious and ethnic groups, with nonstate militias supporting
each warring party, and outside powers pursuing their own strategic
interests. Iran supports the Assad regime as the linchpin of an Iranian
historic dominance stretching from Tehran to the Mediterranean. The Gulf
States insist on the overthrow of Mr. Assad to thwart Shiite Iranian
designs, which they fear more than Islamic State. They seek the defeat
of ISIS while avoiding an Iranian victory. This ambivalence has been
deepened by the nuclear deal, which in the Sunni Middle East is widely
interpreted as tacit American acquiescence in Iranian hegemony.

These
conflicting trends, compounded by America’s retreat from the region,
have enabled Russia to engage in military operations deep in the Middle
East, a deployment unprecedented in Russian history. Russia’s principal
concern is that the Assad regime’s collapse could reproduce the chaos of
Libya, bring ISIS into power in Damascus, and turn all of Syria into a
haven for terrorist operations, reaching into Muslim regions inside
Russia’s southern border in the Caucasus and elsewhere.

On the
surface, Russia’s intervention serves Iran’s policy of sustaining the
Shiite element in Syria. In a deeper sense, Russia’s purposes do not
require the indefinite continuation of Mr. Assad’s rule. It is a classic
balance-of-power maneuver to divert the Sunni Muslim terrorist threat
from Russia’s southern border region. It is a geopolitical, not an
ideological, challenge and should be dealt with on that level. Whatever
the motivation, Russian forces in the region—and their participation in
combat operations—produce a challenge that American Middle East policy
has not encountered in at least four decades.

American
policy has sought to straddle the motivations of all parties and is
therefore on the verge of losing the ability to shape events. The U.S.
is now opposed to, or at odds in some way or another with, all parties
in the region: with Egypt on human rights; with Saudi Arabia over Yemen;
with each of the Syrian parties over different objectives. The U.S.
proclaims the determination to remove Mr. Assad but has been unwilling
to generate effective leverage—political or military—to achieve that
aim. Nor has the U.S. put forward an alternative political structure to
replace Mr. Assad should his departure somehow be realized.

Russia,
Iran, ISIS and various terrorist organizations have moved into this
vacuum: Russia and Iran to sustain Mr. Assad; Tehran to foster imperial
and jihadist designs. The Sunni states of the Persian Gulf, Jordan and
Egypt, faced with the absence of an alternative political structure,
favor the American objective but fear the consequence of turning Syria
into another Libya.

American policy on Iran has moved to the
center of its Middle East policy. The administration has insisted that
it will take a stand against jihadist and imperialist designs by Iran
and that it will deal sternly with violations of the nuclear agreement.
But it seems also passionately committed to the quest for bringing about
a reversal of the hostile, aggressive dimension of Iranian policy
through historic evolution bolstered by negotiation.

The prevailing U.S. policy toward Iran is often compared by its advocates to the Nixon
administration’s opening to China, which contributed, despite some
domestic opposition, to the ultimate transformation of the Soviet Union
and the end of the Cold War. The comparison is not apt. The opening to
China in 1971 was based on the mutual recognition by both parties that
the prevention of Russian hegemony in Eurasia was in their common
interest. And 42 Soviet divisions lining the Sino-Soviet border
reinforced that conviction. No comparable strategic agreement exists
between Washington and Tehran. On the contrary, in the immediate
aftermath of the nuclear accord, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei
described the U.S. as the “Great Satan” and rejected negotiations with
America about nonnuclear matters. Completing his geopolitical diagnosis,
Mr. Khamenei also predicted that Israel would no longer exist in 25
years.

Forty-five years ago, the expectations of China and the
U.S. were symmetrical. The expectations underlying the nuclear agreement
with Iran are not. Tehran will gain its principal objectives at the
beginning of the implementation of the accord. America’s benefits reside
in a promise of Iranian conduct over a period of time. The opening to
China was based on an immediate and observable adjustment in Chinese
policy, not on an expectation of a fundamental change in China’s
domestic system. The optimistic hypothesis on Iran postulates that
Tehran’s revolutionary fervor will dissipate as its economic and
cultural interactions with the outside world increase.

American
policy runs the risk of feeding suspicion rather than abating it. Its
challenge is that two rigid and apocalyptic blocs are confronting each
other: a Sunni bloc consisting of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the
Gulf States; and the Shiite bloc comprising Iran, the Shiite sector of
Iraq with Baghdad as its capital, the Shiite south of Lebanon under
Hezbollah control facing Israel, and the Houthi portion of Yemen,
completing the encirclement of the Sunni world. In these circumstances,
the traditional adage that the enemy of your enemy can be treated as
your friend no longer applies. For in the contemporary Middle East, it
is likely that the enemy of your enemy remains your enemy.

A
great deal depends on how the parties interpret recent events. Can the
disillusionment of some of our Sunni allies be mitigated? How will
Iran’s leaders interpret the nuclear accord once implemented—as a
near-escape from potential disaster counseling a more moderate course,
returning Iran to an international order? Or as a victory in which they
have achieved their essential aims against the opposition of the U.N.
Security Council, having ignored American threats and, hence, as an
incentive to continue Tehran’s dual approach as both a legitimate state
and a nonstate movement challenging the international order?

Two-power
systems are prone to confrontation, as was demonstrated in Europe in
the run-up to World War I. Even with traditional weapons technology, to
sustain a balance of power between two rigid blocs requires an
extraordinary ability to assess the real and potential balance of
forces, to understand the accumulation of nuances that might affect this
balance, and to act decisively to restore it whenever it deviates from
equilibrium—qualities not heretofore demanded of an America sheltered
behind two great oceans.

But the current crisis is taking place
in a world of nontraditional nuclear and cyber technology. As competing
regional powers strive for comparable threshold capacity, the
nonproliferation regime in the Middle East may crumble. If nuclear
weapons become established, a catastrophic outcome is nearly inevitable.
A strategy of pre-emption is inherent in the nuclear technology. The
U.S. must be determined to prevent such an outcome and apply the
principle of nonproliferation to all nuclear aspirants in the region.
Too
much of our public debate deals with tactical expedients. What we need
is a strategic concept and to establish priorities on the following
principles:

• So long as ISIS survives and remains in control of a
geographically defined territory, it will compound all Middle East
tensions. Threatening all sides and projecting its goals beyond the
region, it freezes existing positions or tempts outside efforts to
achieve imperial jihadist designs. The destruction of ISIS is more
urgent than the overthrow of Bashar Assad, who has already lost over
half of the area he once controlled. Making sure that this territory
does not become a permanent terrorist haven must have precedence. The
current inconclusive U.S. military effort risks serving as a recruitment
vehicle for ISIS as having stood up to American might.

• The
U.S. has already acquiesced in a Russian military role. Painful as this
is to the architects of the 1973 system, attention in the Middle East
must remain focused on essentials. And there exist compatible
objectives. In a choice among strategies, it is preferable for ISIS-held
territory to be reconquered either by moderate Sunni forces or outside
powers than by Iranian jihadist or imperial forces. For Russia, limiting
its military role to the anti-ISIS campaign may avoid a return to Cold
War conditions with the U.S.

• The reconquered territories should
be restored to the local Sunni rule that existed there before the
disintegration of both Iraqi and Syrian sovereignty. The sovereign
states of the Arabian Peninsula, as well as Egypt and Jordan, should
play a principal role in that evolution. After the resolution of its
constitutional crisis, Turkey could contribute creatively to such a
process.

• As the terrorist region is being dismantled and
brought under nonradical political control, the future of the Syrian
state should be dealt with concurrently. A federal structure could then
be built between the Alawite and Sunni portions. If the Alawite regions
become part of a Syrian federal system, a context will exist for the
role of Mr. Assad, which reduces the risks of genocide or chaos leading
to terrorist triumph.

• The U.S. role in such a Middle East would
be to implement the military assurances in the traditional Sunni states
that the administration promised during the debate on the Iranian
nuclear agreement, and which its critics have demanded.

• In this
context, Iran’s role can be critical. The U.S. should be prepared for a
dialogue with an Iran returning to its role as a Westphalian state
within its established borders.

The U.S. must decide for itself
the role it will play in the 21st century; the Middle East will be our
most immediate—and perhaps most severe—test. At question is not the
strength of American arms but rather American resolve in understanding
and mastering a new world.

Mr. Kissinger served as national-security adviser and secretary of state under Presidents Nixon and Ford.

In a 2005 best seller, Harry Frankfurt, a Princeton philosophy professor, explored the often complex nature of popular false ideas. “On Bulls—” examined outright lies, ambiguous forms of obfuscation and the not-always-transparent intentions of those who promote them. Now, in “On Inequality,” Mr. Frankfurt eviscerates one of the shibboleths of our time: that economic inequality—in his definition, “the possession by some of more money than others”—is the most urgent issue confronting society. This idea, he believes, suffers from logical and moral errors of the highest order.

The fixation on equality, as a moral ideal in and of itself, is critically flawed, according to the professor. It holds that justice is determined by one person’s position relative to another, not his absolute well-being. Therefore the logic of egalitarianism can lead to perverse outcomes, he argues. Most egregiously, income inequality could be eliminated very effectively “by making everyone equally poor.” And while the lowest economic stratum of society is always associated with abject poverty, this need not be the case. Mr. Frankfurt imagines instances where those “who are doing considerably worse than others may nonetheless be doing rather well.” This possibility—as with contemporary America’s wide inequalities among relatively prosperous people—undermines the coherence of a philosophy mandating equality.

Mr. Frankfurt acknowledges that “among morally conscientious individuals, appeals in behalf of equality often have very considerable emotional or rhetorical power.” The motivations for pursuing equality may be well-meaning but they are profoundly misguided and contribute to “the moral disorientation and shallowness of our time.”

The idea that equality in itself is a paramount goal, Mr. Frankfurt argues, alienates people from their own characters and life aspirations. The amount of wealth possessed by others does not bear on “what is needed for the kind of life a person would most sensibly and appropriately seek for himself.” The incessant egalitarian comparison of one against another subordinates each individual’s goals to “those that are imposed on them by the conditions in which others happen to live.” Thus, individuals are led to apply an arbitrary relative standard that does not “respect” their authentic selves.

If his literalist critique of egalitarianism is often compelling, Mr. Frankfurt’s own philosophy has more in common with such thinking than is first apparent. For Mr. Frankfurt, the imperative of justice is to alleviate poverty and improve lives, not to make people equal. He does not, however, think that it is morally adequate merely to provide people with a safety net. Instead, he argues for an ideal of “sufficiency.”

By sufficiency Mr. Frankfurt means enough economic resources for every individual to be reasonably satisfied with his circumstances, assuming that the individual’s satisfaction need not be disturbed by others having more. While more money might be welcome, it would not “alter his attitude toward his life, or the degree of his contentment with it.” The achievement of economic and personal contentment by everyone is Mr. Frankfurt’s priority. In fact, his principle of sufficiency is so ambitious it demands that lack of money should never be the cause of anything “distressing or unsatisfying” in anyone’s life.

What’s the harm of such a desirable, if unrealistic goal? The author declares that inequality is “morally disturbing” only when his standard of sufficiency is not achieved. His just society would, in effect, mandate a universal entitlement to a lifestyle that has been attained only by a minuscule fraction of humans in all history. Mr. Frankfurt recognizes such reasoning may bring us full circle: “The most feasible approach” to universal sufficiency may well be policies that, in practice, differ little from those advocated in the “pursuit of equality.”

In passing, the author notes another argument against egalitarianism, the “dangerous conflict between equality and liberty.” He is referring to the notion that leaving people free to choose their work and what goods and services they consume will always lead to an unequal distribution of income. To impose any preconceived economic distribution will, as the philosopher Robert Nozick argued, involves “continuous interference in people’s lives.” Like egalitarianism, Mr. Frankfurt’s ideal of “sufficiency” would hold property rights and economic liberty hostage to his utopian vision.

Such schemes, Nozick argued, see economic assets as having arrived on earth fully formed, like “manna from heaven,” with no consideration of their human origin. Mr. Frankfurt also presumes that one person’s wealth must be the reason others don’t have a “sufficient” amount to be blissfully carefree; he condemns the “excessively affluent” who have “extracted” too much from the nation. This leaves a would-be philosopher-king the task of divvying up loot as he chooses.

On the surface, “On Inequality” is a provocative challenge to a prevailing orthodoxy. But as the author’s earlier book showed, appearances can deceive. When Thomas Piketty, in “Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” says that most wealth is rooted in theft or is arbitrary, or when Mr. Frankfurt’s former Princeton colleague Paul Krugman says the “rich” are “undeserving,” they are not (just) making the case for equality. By arguing that wealth accumulation is inherently unjust, they lay a moral groundwork for confiscation of property. Similarly, Mr. Frankfurt accuses the affluent of “gluttony”—a sentiment about which there appears to be unanimity in that temple of tenured sufficiency, the Princeton faculty club. The author claims to be motivated by respect for personal autonomy and fulfillment. By ignoring economic liberty, he reveals he is not.